Internal Benefit Measurement of SEPO Project

In our project of Internal Benefit Measurement of SEPO, we use four different webpage formats to analyze, guide format, benefit format, quick answer format, and smart answer format.

1. Guide Format Description

This first format refers to pages giving information of guidance and procedure description. A guide format may include information as followed:

(1) Basic bullets for guidance of a step-by-step process

(2) Basic information in several aspects on a procedure or a concept

(3) Reference links to other pages

2. Benefit Format Description:

Benefit formats describes pages, which could help citizens do the following things on-line:

(1) Pay for tax/fine/transport fee and so on.

(2) Apply for TFN/ ABN/GST and so on.

(3) Other government-related business which citizens could do on-line.

3. Quick Answer Description:

Quick answer formats describes simple information pages, which give citizens clear answer based on unambiguous key words.

4. Smart Answer Description:

The smart answer format is a good way to lead the user into the appropriate government department by asking answers of certain questions. A smart answer format may include the information as follow:

(1) One or more dialog boxes for user to fill

(2) One or more drop-down lists for user to choose

After gathering and analyzing the information automatically, the user can be lead to a certain page to proceed. We list out two examples from the SA government website using the format.

And in each of the four parts, we provide some examples from SA government website to demonstrate. In addition, performance measurement is also used in demonstrate the potential internal benefits in each of the four formats.

To calculate the overall internal benefit, the evaluation equation can be used:

Success degree * Guide format + Success degree * Benefit format + Success degree * Quick answer format + Success degree * Smart answer format

Performance Measurement

Performance measurement is a process for collecting and reporting information regarding the performance of an individual, group or organizations. It can involve looking at process/strategies in place, as well as whether outcomes are in line with what was intended or should have been achieved. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Performance_measurement)

And also, Performance measurement can help in analyze the performance of our products, services, and the processes that produce them. It can help us understand, manage, and improve how our organizations do. Performance measures let us know:

·  how well our product is doing

·  if our product is meeting the production goals

·  if our customers are satisfied with the product

·  if our service processes are in statistical control

·  what we can do to improve them.

As a process itself, performance measurement is an overall management system involving prevention and detection aimed at achieving objects of the work product or service to your customer's requirements. In addition, it is concerned with process optimization through increased efficiency and effectiveness of the process or product. These actions occur in a continuous cycle, allowing options for expansion and improvement of the work process or product as better techniques are discovered and implemented. (http://www.orau.gov/pbm/handbook/Section-1.html)

There are six general categories which can be used as performance measurement groups.

1. Effectiveness: A process characteristic indicating the degree to which the process output (work product) conforms to requirements. (Are we doing the right things?)

2. Efficiency: A process characteristic indicating the degree to which the process produces the required output at minimum resource cost. (Are we doing things right?)

3. Quality: The degree to which a product or service meets customer requirements and expectations.

4. Timeliness: Measures whether a unit of work was done correctly and on time. Criteria must be established to define what constitutes timeliness for a given unit of work. The criterion is usually based on customer requirements.

5. Productivity: The value added by the process divided by the value of the labor and capital consumed.

6. Safety: Measures the overall health of the organization and the working environment of its employees.

(http://www.orau.gov/pbm/handbook/p2.html)

In the project of SEPO, we used the first five categories to analyze the internal benefit of the project.

SOA and EA

Blog 9

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Other activities which are similar to enterprise architecture and Business-IT alignment.

SOA (Service-Oriented Architecture) is an activity similar to EA. The concept of SOA is announced by Gartner in 1996. SOA concept supplies a kind of Architecture style, which can simplifies the business and inter-operability between different business units. It can strengthen the connection between the units, thus identify capability of the enterprise quickly and avoid duplicate capability among different business fields, departments, and units.

SOA focus on building application system with more flexibility, which is of importance in to day complex and high-speed developing business environment.

In the implementation of SOA, because of the finer granularity it brings, the complexity unavoidably happens in the total system. Therefore, there are some aspect should be think of in the implementation:

1. The understanding of the relationship between technology groups and service groups

2. Tracking business to IT system

3. Platform and inter-operability

4. Performance visualization and optimization

Layer interaction in SOA

If these aspects cannot be solved appropriately, the SOA project will suffer considerable risk in the following aspects:

1. Cannot evaluate the project correctly. This may lead to overspending in infrastructure or low-quality service.

2. Lead to islands in services according to the implement details, thus cause the IT architecture fragile and great amount maintain cost.

3. Cannot help the potential consumers identify the reusable services, thus cause the duplication in services, lack of visibility and complexity increase in integration.

It is a good way to develop EA in the company to ensure the implementation of SOA.

As to SOA, EA provide a series of tools and technologies which can help build relationship between business-dominant SOA and developer-dominant SOA, thus solve the problems SOA is facing:

1. EA links the IT capital and business in clear and quantified ways. With amplified context, these models can effectively support evaluation and project portfolio management.

2. EA defines principles, framework, patterns and standards, ensures the inter-operability and reusability.

3. EA links different opinions of single business project among different departments, provide a consistent model.

The EA uses a kind of unified, standardized, broad language, linking the strategy, vision, motivation, business ability gaps, and etc. All of these would be described in detail in the architecture documentation, with which can easily track, analyze and certify the support degree to the business.

EA Tool Evaluation

Blog 10
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Write about EA tools. What do you think of them? Are they really useful? How about cost?

What should be considered in evaluating an EA tool?

The evaluation process should consist of two dimensions: the basic functionality of the tool, and the utility of the tool to different professionals.

When reviewing an EA tool’s basic functionality, the tools basic functionality should be examined in the following areas:

Methodologies and Models;

Model Development Interface;

Tool Automation;

Extendibility and Customization;

Analysis and Manipulation;

Repository;

Deployment Architecture;

Costs and Vendor Support;

Architecture Results.

When considering the tool’s utility to different professionals, captures the fitness for purpose of the tool, and describes how useful the tool would be to particular professionals. The types of professionals considered were:

Enterprise Architects;

Solution Architects

Strategic Planners / Management;

Enterprise Program Managers

Software Architects / engineers

External Partners.

After the evaluation in all these factors, the architect should fill in the following blanks.

Model Development Interface:

The overall quality of the model development interface is an important characteristic of any enterprise architecture development tool. The interface must support the modeling activity well, and must also be intelligently structured, make good use of limited screen space, be logical and consistent to use and navigate.

Tool Automation:

Developing and populating enterprise architecture models is often the most time consuming part of the enterprise architecture development activity. By providing support for automating parts of the enterprise architecture development processes, a tool can help speed up the overall development activity.

Extendibility and Customization:

This functional group captures how well an enterprise architecture tool can be modified to meet the unique enterprise architectural requirements of a unique organization. Enterprise Architecture tools may support customization by allowing users to add new modeling approaches or to modify the modeling approaches already supported by the tool.

Analysis and manipulation:

Analysis support provided by a tool may simply examine how correct or complete the model is, relative to a particular modeling approach used. More sophisticated analysis support may allow the model to be interrogated in some way, or be subjected to particular analysis methods. Analysis support may include the ability to compare different versions of models, allowing current and to-be enterprise architectures to be compared. Manipulation functions capture a tool’s ability to change the way the models are represented and viewed. This may include the ability to view models from particular perspectives.

Repository:

Most of the tools on the market make use of some kind of data repository to hold the developed models. The functions provided by the tool’s repository have a significant impact on the overall functionality, scalability and extendibility of an enterprise architecture tool.

Deployment Architecture:

A tool’s deployment architecture describes the tool’s software structure and software implementation. Generally, enterprise architecture tools tend to adopt one of two deployment architectures: either a single user/single client structure, or a simple two-tier client/server structure.

Costs and Vendor Support:

Also important in the overall cost of adopting an enterprise architecture tool, are the cost and type of maintenance and/or after sales support contracts offered by the vendor.

EA methodology implementing

The following diagram shows how an EA project be implemented.

The 4 phases are quite same in different methodologies. And the thread is clear in defining ‘‘where, what, why, who, and how we do architecture’’.

The main aspects are as follows:

Define the enterprise

Identify key drivers and elements in the organizational context

Define the requirements for architecture work

Define the architecture principles that will inform any architecture work

Define the framework to be used

Define the relationships between management frameworks

Evaluate the enterprise architecture maturity

In the implementation of TOGAF 9, there are 10 steps designed by Open Group in TOGAF 9 handbook:

1) Define the Enterprise: the question “why we have this business” can help the architecture team understand the enterprise business target and help them identify those have actual influence on enterprise.

2) Identify the key elements influence the organization: architects should understand the motivation inside the industry, to ensure that in the new plan implementation, the framework design is suitable for the enterprise.

3) Clarify the duty of framework development: EA developers must have interactions with employees of all the levels, from managers to basic level staff, and also the manufacturers, suppliers, and regulatory authorities.

4) Identify framework principle, link it with organizational value and motivation: different organizational value means distinction in organizational culture, structure and the attitude in treating risks.

5) Understand architecture governance:

6) Combine the architecture development process with other management framework: ADM can be used as an independent method, and can also be integrated into other frameworks.

7) Make architecture maturity assessment: Use Capability Maturity Mode to judge the readiness of changing with adopting EA method.

8) Bring architecture functions into the organization:

9) Customize TOGAF:

10) Documentation system.

Core of TOGAF: ADM

What is ADM (Architecture Development Method)?

The TOGAF ADM is the result of continuous contributions from a large number of architecture practitioners. It describes a method for developing an enterprise architecture, and forms the core of TOGAF. It integrates elements of TOGAF of all available architectural assets, to meet the business and IT needs of an organization. ---TOGAF Version 9 handbook (http://www.opengroup.org/togaf/).

ADM Process:

An EA process should be an iterative process. That means, we should analyze the architecture quite often to make it suitable for our vision.

ADM is iterative; the process of ADM can be separated into four parts.

1. Architecture Context: establishing the architecture approach, principles, scope, and vision.

2. Architecture Definition: Business, Information Systems, and Technology Architecture phases.

3. Transition Planning: creation of formal change roadmap.

4. Architecture Governance: governance of change activity.

Figure 19-1 pp216 TOGAF Version 9 handbook

In each part, there is a list on the priority of work.

Figure 19-2 pp218 TOGAF Version 9 handbook

What is the meaning of Baseline and Target in the figure above?

They are two different styles in architecture definition, Baseline First and Target First.

Although the handbook of TOGAF version 9 give us long definition of these two new concepts, it is quite easy to understand them in a different way:

Baseline First means we should focus on analyze current conditions of enterprise. When the target is not easily built up, we can adopt this process first.

Target First means we should focus on determine the vision we want to realize.

The figure 19-3 is the activity by iteration for Baseline First style, the one for Target First style is quite similar. When adopting EA, we can analyze which style should be used in each part of the iteration. Adopting these both styles can make the plan more agile.

Some of the iteration cycles can be executed once, whereas others have a natural minimum number of cycles. For some iteration cycles, each iteration follows the same process; where there is more than one iteration within a cycle, the process differs slightly for each of the iterations.

When considering the usage of iteration cycles, it is also necessary to consider where to place appropriate checkpoints within the process. Check status frequently means low misunderstanding and efficiency. When we are adopting EA, we should also think about trying stick to the direction when keep high efficiency.

Tips: Why it is so difficult in finding successful EA case?

Even we know something about EA; we still do not know how to build up it. We want to find some case in the real world. But there is few EA case on the Internet. Why?

I think three facts contribute to this result.

1. EA cannot show value directly. It can just tell the companies to do things right. When the specific value is shown, the contribution of EA is hard to measure.

2. EA contains the analysis of current architecture, future architecture and roadmap, which are treated as core secrets in companies. From outside, we cannot see EA’s contribution clearly. The author of An Introduction to Enterprise Architecture Scott A. Bernard appealed in his book that enterprises should release some case in adopting EA to help the development of EA.

3. There are still arguments on EA’s concept. Even inside Open Group, there is no uniform answer of what exactly EA is. Different people have different idea. In addition, there are tens of different EA frameworks. None of them is perfect.

So, we cannot find some practical case to analyze and follow.

The Open Group Architecture Framework-TOGAF

There are too many kinds of services?

In my first job, the CIO was always complaining that the company had too many servers. This case confused me. However, when I was communicating with CIOs and IT managers in other companies, they told me the same thing. Why?

In large enterprises, it seems that all the business areas have their own definition on “customers”. This leads to an effect that all the customers’ information is sitting in hundreds of different services processes. Thus, a lot of information among all these services is redundant. Thus, there are “too many services.”

How to solve this problem? Superficially, the problem is lying on too many service kinds, but essentially, it is on lack of enterprise architecture. The company should choose an efficient EA framework, due to that condition.

Which EA framework is a better choice?

In 2009, the Open Group take a survey to find out all the main EA frameworks markets share. The results are listed as follows:

We can notice that clearly; TOGAF has occupied the largest market share.

TOGAF, The Open Group Architecture Framework is an excellent choice.

TOGAF is on its 9.1 version (http://www.opengroup.org/togaf/) now.

TOGAF is an architecture framework. It is a tool to help develop, check and accept, operate, use and maintain the architecture. It is adopted by 80% Forbes 50 companies.

The scope of TOGAF

As shown in the above table, TOGAF includes ADM (Architecture Development Method), Architecture Content Framework, Technical Reference Models, ADM Guidelines & Techniques, Enterprise Continuum, and Architecture Capability Framework.

Also, TOGAF is a framework that can do well with open and standard SOA frame. In the TOGAF 9.1 Guidebook, there is a whole chapter tells how to use the TOGAF to define and manage SOA. In that chapter, SOA is described as architecture, and focusing on elements of SOA using and deploying, the connections between SOA and TOGAF, and definition and structure of service contract. (https://store.opengroup.org/catalog/product_info.php?products_id=122)

How can the TOGAF help?

TOGAF pays close attention to BV; and it combines strategy, operation, and policy with business planning cycle closely. And furthermore, it can not only work with business, but also can be integrated with International Organization Framework.

Both small companies and in multinational corporations can use TOGAF to solve various problems. Risk management, business transformation, inter-operability, etc. all these things can included in TOGAF, and all of them are basic elements in business planning.

In a word, although TOGAF is born in IT management, it can be used in various fields. Every business and management learner should learn TOGAF, and then the business and technology can communicate with each other more fluently. ----Robert Weisman(http://www.searchsoa.com.cn/showcontent_20786.htm)